Absence
by Casey V
Summary: Olette keeps buying four ice cream bars. Pence keeps taking pictures of empty space. Hayner knows something is missing, but he can't put a finger on it. Or bump a fist against it, either.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kingdom Hearts, and I do not have anything clever to add to this statement today.

**Rating:** PG-13 for language

**Pairings: ** kinda sorta implied unrequited Hayner/Roxas

**Summary: ** Olette keeps buying four ice cream bars. Pence keeps taking pictures of empty space. Hayner knows something is missing, but he can't put a finger on it. Or bump a fist against it, either.

**Casey would like you to note:** This is kind of a postscript of sorts to _A Thought and a Shadow_, because I kind of fell in love with Hayner all over again while writing the tram scene in chapter 6, and I thought he might have something to say about all of this.

Also, there is not enough Hayner/Roxas in the world: y/y

* * *

**Absence**

It started in a random moment on a day that was no different from any other day, to the absolute best of his knowledge, and he was pacing from one end of the alley hideout to the other while the spikes of sunlight flashed on and off overhead with the passing of a train. He paced because movement helped him think, helped the process of logic from one conclusion to the next progress in an orderly fashion and presumably by the end of it, at some final step somewhere between the couch and the dartboard, enlightenment would strike.

And on that particular random moment on that particular day when both the train overhead and the train of thoughts came to a halt he spun on his heel to face the stove, a rusty metal contraption that sat to one side for no real reason, but it was too heavy to move anyway. Faced it, and stood there with his hands spread to either side and mouth open in preparation to share his newfound epiphany.

Stopped, and stared, frozen in time, and wondered for the barest second after he realized what he was doing just what the fuck that was all about, anyway.

Pence looked up from the roll of film he was spooling and watched him stand there like an idiot about to engage an expanse of empty space in some kind of conversation. He took the time to blink, as Hayner took the time to continue not moving, and at length he voiced both of their internal monologues with the phrase, "What the crap are you doing?"

Hayner shook himself out of his statuette setting and rubbed his forehead. He never did remember whatever it was he had just figured out.

* * *

It was two days later that Olette arrived in the hideout at a dead run, giggling hysterically about something or other and Pence was right behind her, but he didn't think that had anything to do with it. She muttered something about Seifer and he growled, preferring that the name not be brought up while they were relaxing in the zen-like confines of their post-adolescent version of a clubhouse, and so he let her collapse on the couch in a fit of laughter without comment and Pence rescued the bag from her hands, retrieving the ice cream bars from within to hand them around. Although Olette probably wasn't capable of eating hers just yet.

But Pence paused just after drawing the first white-wrapped frozen confection from the bag, frost still clinging to the wrapper as he held it and the right side of the bag in one hand, peering inside. He paused in the same way that Hayner had paused, two days before. "You bought four."

"What're you talking about?" She straightened on the couch finally, rolling upright and straightening her shirt in a dainty, ladylike gesture that denied the previous hysterics.

Pence showed her the bag.

"Huh," she said after a moment, low and confused. "I guess I wasn't paying attention."

"I'll take the extra," Hayner said immediately, and he wasn't sure why he felt like he was the most entitled to it, anyway.

* * *

Sometimes he'd be skating and pull off a trick he'd been practicing for weeks, or he'd totally beat Pence at a videogame, or he'd tell a really awesome joke to the rapt audience of his two best friends that left them both in cackling and tearing up and clapping enthusiastically at yet another flawless delivery. Something like that would happen and his chest would swell with pride and in that moment of victory he'd reach to the side with one arm, fist curled loosely like he intended to bat at something in the air. But nothing was there.

And then the moment would die; he'd stand there and stare at his hand, palm falling open, and wonder what the hell he was missing.

* * *

Pence let them in the darkroom in his parents' basement sometimes, so long as Hayner stayed put in the hard metal folding chair to the side, because Pence knew better than anybody (except, possibly, their seventh grade lab instructor) that Hayner and chemicals did not mix and should be kept a safe distance from each other at all times. And usually, Hayner behaved, but he liked to see what was happening and more often than not by the end of the visit he was on his feet and staring at the photographs hanging by clothespins from the lines stretched across the room.

He cocked his head and stared at a short row of them, all from the beach sometime a week or two before, and it was just the three of them--or, more correctly, the pictures were of him and Olette, and Pence was clearly behind the camera.

Only something had gone wrong, with all of them, that was nothing at all like Pence and his usual sense of composition.

"Hey, man," Hayner called and waited until Pence was at his side, features striking and curious in the red light. "What's up? All of these are off-center."

"No they're not." Pence started out arguing and gestured to the first one, mouth open and eyes bright, ready to explain whatever stroke of brilliance had lead him to take these shots in this particular way.

But as he stood there his voice faded out, and he tilted his head to look in the same way that Hayner had.

After a long set of interminable minutes had passed, Pence looked across his shoulder with wide eyes, something a little frightened but mostly sad in the expression. "It's like someone's missing, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Hayner said, and his voice caught somewhere behind his tongue.

* * *

On days when it was so hot it was impossible, Hayner spent the afternoon on the roof of a tram. It was kind of counterproductive, if he thought about it (which he usually didn't) because the trams were metal and on hot days the roof tended to echo the heat lingering in the air and send it steeping into whatever happened to be touching it--in this case, a boy in camo shorts and little else lounging on the roof.

And while he lounged there, leaned back on his shoulders and staring up at the endless sunset in the sky, he could almost feel it. When he closed his eyes, he was almost sure of it, that there were shoulders resting against his. That he could feel the tickle of hair on the back of his neck. That he could almost hear a second set of breaths, and he was so certain of it for a moment that he leaned back into the presence, relaxed against it with a lifelong familiarity that didn't exist.

When he dropped to the roof with a slam of metal that banged painfully against his head he knew that something was very wrong, because nothing else in the world had ever made his heart ache like this.

* * *

Olette said it was some weird kind of deja vu. She said--gently, because Hayner was wound tighter than spun sugar and rubberband-powered racecars, that it didn't necessarily mean anything. It might be a product of stress, or the heat waves that engulfed the town in the uncertain space between summer and fall, or maybe it was one last bout of puberty flipping them all the bird.

She patted his shoulder so, so gently and told him not to worry about it. Not to dwell on it.

He asked her how many ice cream bars she'd brought.

He figured she could say things like that because she and Pence had been sitting closer and closer together these days. That sometimes they were out doing things that didn't include him. That every once in a while she would appear in the usual spot wearing some new bauble or kerchief in her hair or just the air of having been spoiled romantically.

Sometimes after they were both gone for the night and the sunlight through the beams overhead was the same red as it always was he would sit on the floor with his arms around his knees and chew on his thumbnail, trying to remember. Trying to bring some kind of image to mind of what should be occupying the empty spaces that they all knew should be occupied; they knew it and he knew it best but even he couldn't explain anything further than that. There was no sense of who, of a style or build or coloring or even a gender. It was like a blank white police-chalk outline hung there in the air, proof that once a body had lain here but without features to give specifics. Just a general place, and position.

If he squeezed his eyes closed tight enough, sometimes--tight enough that tears leaked from the corners and his heart squeezed along with them--he could call up the sensation of skin. The shape of a body that fit alongside his. The dull, unidentifiable scent of metal and wind and ice cream recently consumed. Flash of something blue.

And he would slam his fist against whatever was available afterwards, because it was never enough and how the fuck could you miss something that was never there to begin with?

* * *

He was never sure, really, until Sora came back.

In wake of everything that was happening his moment had probably seemed petty. Sora was a busy guy, Sora had a purpose in the world and the universe that was greater than Hayner the attitude problem from Twilight Town was capable of comprehending. Knowing when things were bigger than him was it's own sort of wisdom, though; and what he knew that day was that all of this had something to do with Sora.

So when he was about to leave their hangout, possibly for the last time, Hayner swung around to face him. Lifted his arm in the same gesture that he'd been using unconsciously for months to collide with empty space and he closed his eyes, waited for nothing to happen yet again. Waited for proof that he was just imagining things, that Olette had a point with her logic and reasonability after all.

But his wrist met skin, and when Hayner opened his eyes Sora's arm was mirroring his own, hand in a fist and pressed alongside his, and Sora was staring at this phenomenon like he had no idea how his own arm had gotten there.

They froze in place like that, like he or one of his friends had so many times since the first time they met this guy, wondering just why this was happening and how life had shifted so drastically with no explanation and no memory as to what had been lost. Hayner moved first, dropped his arm and took Sora's face between his hands. Pressed their foreheads together so he couldn't see anything but Sora's eyes and _stared_.

Stared, until he saw a flicker of another blue somewhere in the blue depths. Something cooler and brighter.

Sora staggered back when Hayner let him go, arms sprawled to the side and sputtering at the sudden, strangely intimate contact and failing to hide how it had shaken him. But he didn't offer an explanation to the Savior of Worlds, just stood in the middle of his hideout, his clubhouse, the _usual spot_, an insignificant fleck of dust on the map in the greater scheme of things--and stared down at his shoes and felt the certainty of something ending, forever, for the first time in his young life.

"I miss you, man," he said, and his voice shivered and broke, and he walked out the cloth-drawn door and into the sunset.


End file.
